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If you have full team of characters with 3 dex and the heaviest armor they can wear, the turn order changes into "enemy phase" and "player phase" as all enemies will move before you. There isnt ANY disadvantage of such configuration as in most games that function this way (xcom etc) it doesnt really matters who goes first player or enemy. Actually if enemies go first they will move within range of your characters so its even better as all characters will be able to attack after "enemy phase". In deadfire you can actually put all characters back and start the combat from afar. It doesnt matter if enemies go first as they will be unable to reach you and you will be the one to act sooner. Its actually better then the mixed initiate order, as all of your characters will be the first to start attacking once enemies move in range in their first turn.

You cant release this mode as it is in current state. You need to totally overhaul the turn order either by changing how initiative works or introduce AP system. Heres how it would work:

Initiative:

- remove rounds and make it dynamic

- make it so character that has for example 2x more initiative/speed will have turns 2x as often

- the mechanics could look like this: there is a game clock and each instance character initiative is added to its pool. Once its say 1000, its the character turn. So the more initiative the higher turn frequency

AP:

- each character would have 20AP pool that is reduced or increased by gear and DEX. Rest stays as it currently is.

- it would make sense now to have some characters with alot of dex or light armored so they get more attacks per turn like throw 2 fireballs each costing 10AP

- the unused AP would get stacked in next round. The most powerful attacks should cost 20-30AP. Power level should reduce AP cost

- it would need significant rebalancing and lots of thinking to make it work. Characters would be able to choose:

1. move huge distance to flank enemy (use all available AP for moving)

2. stay in place and throw 2 fireballs (each worth 10 AP, if you have some armor or dex penalties it would be impossible to do each turn)

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I kind of like the fact that speed and recovery are less important. I think they are too important in the base game, and I like some variation. It means we can actually use some things, like the medium shield Block modal, that we would never use ordinarily.

That said, I agree with you (from my limited experience) that action speed stuff swung too far toward being just unimportant now. There is one guy in the Builds forum who argued somewhat persuasively that initiative is more important than we are making it out to be, so I'm open to the possibility that we need to play more to be sure about this.

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Low Dex and heavy armor will seriously hamper your casters. If you cast a spell and no combatant has a lower Init than your spell, it goes off at the beginning of the next round AND will eat up your caster's action for that round. Having a very high initative/dex allows a caster to cast every round, but being slow will result in only one action every two rounds.

The same rule applies to enemy casters from what I can tell. So if you go with the "make the whole party super slow" tactics, you'll probably eat a spell every round and might even be too slow to interrupt any but the slowest of enemies spells.

Come to think of it, you can probably exploit this. Give your casters high speed and make at least one party member so slow that he/she's almost guaranteed to act after your spells go off. That should mostly guarantee that you can cast a spell every round.

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If you cast a spell and no combatant has a lower Init than your spell, it goes off at the beginning of the next round AND will eat up your caster's action for that round.

I dont think its true. If it is then the system is even worse than I thought. Totally exploitable and unbalanced

Didn't have the opportunity to go too far into the game, but I did get a Wizard to Port Maje and when fighting the Looters, I won initiative and cast Chill Fog. It went off at the first initiative spot of the next round and my Wizard definitely could only move (and take free actions) that round but not act (neither cast nor attack).

Only one of the Looters acted in the first round, for some reason. I did the fight multiple times and it was not even the same one on every try. Not sure what was going on there but maybe the first round of combat was some kind of surprise round or something? So this Initative behavior MIGHT be limited to the first round of combat but even then I see no reason why a caster should not be able to act ever turn if melee/ranged characters can do so.

My Wizard has quite high Dex so I didn't manage to get a spell cast the next turn at any of the later rounds. I'd need to test it with a low dex wizard in heavy armor.

Spells tend to be more powerful than martial abilities but I thought the balancing factor was the risk of getting interrupted.

EDIT: Ok, I did some more testing. I tried to delay my turn so I'd be last in Initative in round two. If I then cast Chill Fog so it goes off in the next round, it doesn't cost me an additional action.

Can't do more testing right now, but I definitely lose an action if I cast chill fog in round 1 (and the cast doesn't go off until round two). However, this doesn't seem to affect Xoti if I have her cast a spell with casting time in round one.

I officially have no idea what's happening there. Maybe this specific encounter is broken or you only use an action if you cast a spell with higher casting time (Xoti's spell had a shorter Cast than Chill Fog).

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you presume too much with the "needs total overhaul" statement. This model of sequencing can work, people just need to get used to the idea that action speed doesn't do much anymore.

Following adjustments could bring more balance I think:

1. Prior design for stats seem to favor RTwP and action speed. If DEX would give damage for ranged and finesse weapons for instance, people would rage less about what DEX actually does.

2. If stats are not changed, and dex is still mainly about action speed, there needs to be some pooling mechanic for initiative I think. Essentially, if you are considerably faster you could get to act again after your bonus pools up after a few rounds for instance.

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1. Prior design for stats seem to favor RTwP and action speed. If DEX would give damage for ranged and finesse weapons for instance, people would rage less about what DEX actually does.

2. If stats are not changed, and dex is still mainly about action speed, there needs to be some pooling mechanic for initiative I think. Essentially, if you are considerably faster you could get to act again after your bonus pools up after a few rounds for instance.

1. What about armor? Also more dmg? It doesnt make sense whatsoever. We dont need another damage stat. I want to be able to spam debuffs on enemies, I dont always want dmg.

2. It looks like super simplified version of what I proposed that is equally hard (if not harder) to implement

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1. Prior design for stats seem to favor RTwP and action speed. If DEX would give damage for ranged and finesse weapons for instance, people would rage less about what DEX actually does.

2. If stats are not changed, and dex is still mainly about action speed, there needs to be some pooling mechanic for initiative I think. Essentially, if you are considerably faster you could get to act again after your bonus pools up after a few rounds for instance.

1. What about armor? Also more dmg? It doesnt make sense whatsoever. We dont need another damage stat. I want to be able to spam debuffs on enemies, I dont always want dmg.

2. It looks like super simplified version of what I proposed that is equally hard (if not harder) to implement

1. There already is a damage stat which is might. What I meant was might can be melee damage, dex for ranged/finesse weapons and int for spell damage. I am aware this would completely change the philosophy behind the stats but DEX needs more importance right now. Some sort of avoidance if you are wearing light armor could also work. All these steps would bring PoE a bit too close to D&D though.

2. Not sure what you are trying to convey about my second point frankly, I guess you agree with it. It would be up to the developers how to implement a mechanic like this and decide how to make it work easily.

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I dont think you have any idea what you are talking about. You want to replace might by dex for some classes, whats the point? They will just dump might then. Each class will have dump stat might or dex.

And no, I dont agree with any of your points.

Your outrage inducing attitude has turned this exchange into an insufferable affair, and it was wrought with hyperbole and needless exaggeration to begin with.

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I am really not deep enough into the system to say how important is initiative. It is absolutely useful for casts. Moving before enemies can be important as it allows you to disable key targets. However, overall there doesn't seem to be much loss in DPS for melee attackers, that much is true.

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I like the idea for initiative, don't like the idea for movement. The initiative suggestion falls in line with what Dex is supposed to do: you act more frequently. AP isn't, though. It's combining stride and dex into one thing and that affects a lot of buffs that exist in the game. A few people have suggested something like the XCOM games and D&D 5e where you can move up to double your normal stride per turn, but it uses up your action. Which is totally worth it, because turnbased mode makes setting up your position WAY more important. With RTwP, you have the option of immediately moving somewhere else as soon as you see a threat coming.

EDIT: Had an afterthought, the initiative solution would also help with combat balances like small and fast weapons not being very worth using, and some encounters taking too long (more frequent attacks = more chances to hit).

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I like the idea for initiative, don't like the idea for movement. The initiative suggestion falls in line with what Dex is supposed to do: you act more frequently. AP isn't, though. It's combining stride and dex into one thing and that affects a lot of buffs that exist in the game. A few people have suggested something like the XCOM games and D&D 5e where you can move up to double your normal stride per turn, but it uses up your action. Which is totally worth it, because turnbased mode makes setting up your position WAY more important.

I don’t really see the point of having the “two point” system from XCOM. The only relevance of movement is reaching enemy targets/moving out of the way.

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I'm reading a bunch of replies from people who don't play TTRPGS, which the turn based combat seems to be based of off (like most CRPGS are).

Rounds are fine, initiative is fine too, we just need some tweaks to get it working as intended. You can see it with some abilities, the damage is much higher, which is what turn based needs. It's hard to tell without me playing some higher level fights in my belt yet but initiative is fairly strong for CC abilities and casting. If you use an ability with 1 round duration at the end of the round it is a waste, although i'm not entirely sure if this is intended or not. I really prefer this system to the action speed % which is the king stat for the most part in the standard mode which really annoys me.

Now the problem I have is that weapons like Firearms don't have much of a disadvantage with the reload property. In 5e Crossbows have the reload property so people with access to multiple attacks in a round cannot benefit from using the higher damage crossbows without a feat tax. There is little reason for you to use a Bow, the only reason you would are for interrupts at this point and depending on the enemy casting you'll probably still be able to interrupt with a fire arm.

I think an idea they could do is for Martial classes (fighter, barb, ranger) is change the -10% recovery time or what ever into an Extra action feat, to allow multi attacking in a turn, i'd probably limit it to auto attacks though, I'd also consider changing the Gunner ability for Rangers into allowing them to make the Extra attack action with Firearms / crossbows. This would lead rangers as the defacto Marksmen in terms of firearms and crossbows.

I really think rounds are 100% awesome and i love it, one other thing that needs to be addressed is engagements / disengagement attacks. I think if you run into an enemies threat range if they have no engagements they should automatically engage you if they have an open slot. Although right now without this, it does kind of make initiative in the opening round strong for tanks in order to get position, but i think it's a little silly to have people who go early be able to run past all your melee characters.

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I like the idea for initiative, don't like the idea for movement. The initiative suggestion falls in line with what Dex is supposed to do: you act more frequently. AP isn't, though. It's combining stride and dex into one thing and that affects a lot of buffs that exist in the game. A few people have suggested something like the XCOM games and D&D 5e where you can move up to double your normal stride per turn, but it uses up your action. Which is totally worth it, because turnbased mode makes setting up your position WAY more important.

I don’t really see the point of having the “two point” system from XCOM. The only relevance of movement is reaching enemy targets/moving out of the way.

What if heavier armor would decrease the movement range?

Well, that's exactly the point. It wouldn't always be relevant, but it's super important when it is, because again, you have to anticipate what's going to happen, not react to it. Plus, it helps out with things like entering combat later than party members in stealth mode, though I'm unsure how strong that'd be for, say, an alpha strike assassin.

Not entirely opposed to heavy armor reducing stride, but I don't see too much of a point besidrs incentivizing light armor for characters that need to move around a lot.

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I like the idea for initiative, don't like the idea for movement. The initiative suggestion falls in line with what Dex is supposed to do: you act more frequently. AP isn't, though. It's combining stride and dex into one thing and that affects a lot of buffs that exist in the game. A few people have suggested something like the XCOM games and D&D 5e where you can move up to double your normal stride per turn, but it uses up your action. Which is totally worth it, because turnbased mode makes setting up your position WAY more important.

I don’t really see the point of having the “two point” system from XCOM. The only relevance of movement is reaching enemy targets/moving out of the way.

What if heavier armor would decrease the movement range?

Well, that's exactly the point. It wouldn't always be relevant, but it's super important when it is, because again, you have to anticipate what's going to happen, not react to it. Plus, it helps out with things like entering combat later than party members in stealth mode, though I'm unsure how strong that'd be for, say, an alpha strike assassin.

Not entirely opposed to heavy armor reducing stride, but I don't see too much of a point besidrs incentivizing light armor for characters that need to move around a lot.

They could go a few ways about it like DnD. They could make heavier armors give a penalty to certain skills, stealth, mechanics, sleight of hand, maybe arcana? Going early in the round for applying CC is VERY strong. But if you have something like a pure damage dealer like my assassin / paladin going later in the round after my stealth alpha strike doesnt really harm me at all. Idk, i think people are undervaluing initiative as it is, but it does need a few tweaks.

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They could go a few ways about it like DnD. They could make heavier armors give a penalty to certain skills, stealth, mechanics, sleight of hand, maybe arcana? Going early in the round for applying CC is VERY strong. But if you have something like a pure damage dealer like my assassin / paladin going later in the round after my stealth alpha strike doesnt really harm me at all. Idk, i think people are undervaluing initiative as it is, but it does need a few tweaks.

I agree, I don't think people are used to thinking about CC as something you want to cast ASAP instead of "at the right moment."

Also, I'll respond to you here about rounds. I don't doubt they CAN tweak it to make it work, but why would you want that? I considered things like multiple actions per turn, but it just didn't make much sense when there's already an entire stat and mechanic dedicated to how often you can act which they chose not to translate into turns for reasons that are so far unclear. It just seems like the path of least resistance to get rid of rounds.

Off the top of my head, you'd want to account for dual wield being both full attacks and higher initiative, but that could be as easily fixed as modifying damage per hit to be lower when dual wielding.

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They could go a few ways about it like DnD. They could make heavier armors give a penalty to certain skills, stealth, mechanics, sleight of hand, maybe arcana? Going early in the round for applying CC is VERY strong. But if you have something like a pure damage dealer like my assassin / paladin going later in the round after my stealth alpha strike doesnt really harm me at all. Idk, i think people are undervaluing initiative as it is, but it does need a few tweaks.

I agree, I don't think people are used to thinking about CC as something you want to cast ASAP instead of "at the right moment."

Also, I'll respond to you here about rounds. I don't doubt they CAN tweak it to make it work, but why would you want that? I considered things like multiple actions per turn, but it just didn't make much sense when there's already an entire stat and mechanic dedicated to how often you can act which they chose not to translate into turns for reasons that are so far unclear. It just seems like the path of least resistance to get rid of rounds.

Off the top of my head, you'd want to account for dual wield being both full attacks and higher initiative, but that could be as easily fixed as modifying damage per hit to be lower when dual wielding.

Yeah, I just think like DND certain classes should be able to get an extra attack action in a round. Casters that don't dump initiative are crazy strong while Martial classes fall behind without the ability to get out a little more weapon damage IMO. I really think giving them an ability to make an extra auto attack per round would help balance out the classes a bit more and would also make initiative a stronger stat.

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Off the top of my head, you'd want to account for dual wield being both full attacks and higher initiative, but that could be as easily fixed as modifying damage per hit to be lower when dual wielding.

If they wanted to go this way, they'd have to remove automatic full-attacks when dual-wielding. They'd have to go back to alternating attacks, with individual initiative (recovery) times for each. That would mimic the base game. Otherwise dual-wielding would be comically overpowered.

I'm open to this suggestion (getting rid of rounds). But they'd have to change "durations" of all abilities completely -- instead of counting in rounds, they'd have to count in initiative value (which would basically amount to units of time).

A big part of me likes the idea that action speed is less valuable. I share the annoyance of another poster that this is the king stat in the base game.

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Making speed less valuable could be accomplished just fine by simply reducing the amounts gained from dexterity, items and buffs. Instead we've gone from one problematic extreme to the other. Initiative is of so little value that I'd strongly consider making dex the dump stat du jour. Often I don't even want to act first on the opening round because enemy positioning makes it awkward to do anything but stand back and let them come to the location you chose to fight in. After the first turn, it pretty much stops mattering who acts first. If anything, it's actually better to have your party's turns all at the same time so you can time everything right instead of your turns mixing with enemy turns. As long as you only get one action per round, there's a strategic advantage to stacking your party's turns all in sequence. I routinely use the delay turn button for that reason, meaning everything that affects initiative is 100% worthless to me.

Too many of this game's mechanics revolve around action- and recovery speed. Making these stats useless is just too much of a balance upset. If it was a pretty niche thing that wasn't affected by very many things, it would be different, but there's just too many items, abilities and build factors designed around speed. This new action economy system is more primitive than Fallout 1. For all the problems with the RTwP speed system, eliminating speed is a much worse alternative. It's not right that you can have two characters that are identical except one has max dex and one has 3, and they'll perform pretty much the same. That's not better than before where speed was a bit too important.

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Making speed less valuable could be accomplished just fine by simply reducing the amounts gained from dexterity, items and buffs. Instead we've gone from one problematic extreme to the other. Initiative is of so little value that I'd strongly consider making dex the dump stat du jour. Often I don't even want to act first on the opening round because enemy positioning makes it awkward to do anything but stand back and let them come to the location you chose to fight in. After the first turn, it pretty much stops mattering who acts first. If anything, it's actually better to have your party's turns all at the same time so you can time everything right instead of your turns mixing with enemy turns. As long as you only get one action per round, there's a strategic advantage to stacking your party's turns all in sequence. I routinely use the delay turn button for that reason, meaning everything that affects initiative is 100% worthless to me.

The problem is doing this, CC that last for 1 round is no longer effective, You can alpha strike some enemies off the board with higher initiative, and spell casting absolutely still needs the speed. It's okay if you're not casting but at the same time you're taking on damage you otherwise wouldn't have to with CC or early spell cast, you can go ahead and dump initiative and have heavy armor, but you'll be gimping your casters and anyone else who wants to use CC or interrupt.

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Off the top of my head, you'd want to account for dual wield being both full attacks and higher initiative, but that could be as easily fixed as modifying damage per hit to be lower when dual wielding.

If they wanted to go this way, they'd have to remove automatic full-attacks when dual-wielding. They'd have to go back to alternating attacks, with individual initiative (recovery) times for each. That would mimic the base game. Otherwise dual-wielding would be comically overpowered.

I'm open to this suggestion (getting rid of rounds). But they'd have to change "durations" of all abilities completely -- instead of counting in rounds, they'd have to count in initiative value (which would basically amount to units of time).

A big part of me likes the idea that action speed is less valuable. I share the annoyance of another poster that this is the king stat in the base game.

I thought about alternate attacks per turn too and I don't think it would be worth it. Say I wanted to attack with one weapon in particular, I now no longer have agency over it, and having to wait until everyone else attacks is more of an issue on turn based than having to wait for your recovery in real time. Granted, my impression could be wrong, but I think they'd be better off just lowering dual wield damage in exchange for full attacks every turn. Or hell, reverse how dual wield works for turn based: you have lower initiative instead, but full damage two weapon full attacks to make up for it.

Again, this is just my impression, but I think the turnbased system itself inherently devalues action speed. Not by much, but enough. Between your turns, any number of enemies are acting, including using free action abilities, interrupting your casters, etc. The change from reacting to anticipating makes you have to pick and choose your actions more carefully, so even if you can potentially act more often, it's not as immediately necessary. One well timed action becomes much more valuable.

Although now I'm wondering where delaying your turn would fit into all this, if we got rid of rounds. It might not work at all. Or maybe delaying puts you down at half the initiative value It would have been if you chose to move. Just spitballing at this point.

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I kind of like the fact that speed and recovery are less important. I think they are too important in the base game, and I like some variation. It means we can actually use some things, like the medium shield Block modal, that we would never use ordinarily.

That said, I agree with you (from my limited experience) that action speed stuff swung too far toward being just unimportant now. There is one guy in the Builds forum who argued somewhat persuasively that initiative is more important than we are making it out to be, so I'm open to the possibility that we need to play more to be sure about this.

I’m sympathetic with this. Since RPGs gave players the ability to manipulate the action economy, particularly by giving their characters more actions, doing so has always been one of the most powerful effects available. Deadfire is no exception, anything that lets you act more frequently is incredibly powerful. But, I also think simply too much of the game is balanced around action speed. Initiative isn’t at all a suitable replacement. While I’m skeptical of those who say initiative is worthless, there’s simply no way it can be anywhere close to as important as action speed. Action speed is fundamentally a multiplier on the total power of a character, but what I haven’t seen mentioned yet is that under the RTwP system, action speed fundamentally has initiative built in as a bonus. Characters that act quickly will see their spells resolve faster than enemies, and because they spend less time in recovery, they can react more quickly to enemy actions, too. A holy slayer with high dexterity and a rapier, for example, could respond more quickly with lay on hands than a low dexterity herald with a saber. But the “initiative” in RTwP granted by action speed is so much less powerful and important than simply taking more actions that it’s hardly even mentioned. I believe initiative probably has powerful uses in Deadfire, but it’s simply no comparison to action speed at all, and too much of the game’s mechanics were built around action speed for initiative to be a sensible replacement.

I think an action point system would make the most sense, since being able to take multiple actions per round would help with the issues people have mentioned of combat feeling a little too slow and misses feeling too painful. A Final Fantasy X like system, would be a more natural translation, though, and would dodge the current ugliness of intelligence and resolve breakpoints.

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"If you cast a spell and no combatant has a lower Init than your spell, it goes off at the beginning of the next round AND will eat up your caster's action for that round. "i had this happen too. made casters very bad in my eyes.

also i paralyze/knock down someone, their turn comes and its dispelled immediately. whats the point of these cc?